About Thrive®

Thrive equips teaching staff to help children and young people understand and manage their emotions, so they feel safe, supported, and ready to learn. Over 50,000 staff in 2,600 schools and settings have received Thrive training, ensuring that 600,000 children and young people aged 0-25 have access to the Thrive Approach. Thrive offers training, online assessments, and expert strategies for working with pupils to improve attendance, behaviour and attainment.

The Thrive offices are in Devon. The team and our customer base are truly national. The role is hybrid with a mixture of home-based, field-based and occasional office-based work in both Devon and our London group headquarters where required.

Thrive is part of Supporting Education Group, a fast-growing group of companies with over 1,200 staff, 70 locations across the UK and a headquarters in Bloomsbury, united by a mission to improve and enhance education for all, thrive commercially and create fulfilling work and opportunities for staff. Our businesses develop proprietary software which is bought into by thousands of schools.

About you and the role

This is an exceptional opportunity for a dynamic, ambitious, product leader, with a passion for education, drive, emotional intelligence and experience in growing digital products. We are looking for someone who believes every child and young person should benefit from Thrive, and has the creative vision and determination to help us make that a reality.

You will design and deliver a dynamic, engaging and intuitive digital platform that is easy for a wide range of customers (from teaching assistants to leaders of large Multi Academy Trusts) to use with minimal support. Our aim is to lead people through a personalised, relational training experience, provide the tools to evaluate and support pupils, and deliver product improvements on a monthly basis to meet emerging customer needs. The flexibility to transition between leading change and rolling your sleeves up to get things done is critical.

Main purpose

Create and deliver a dynamic, engaging and intuitive digital platform that enables Thrive to support 1.5 million children and young people in 6000 nurseries, schools and colleges.  

Draw on input from specialists in neuroscience, child development, mental health and wellbeing, an understanding of the market, customer need, government policy, sales methods and best practice in terms of school software product design.

Strategy & Leadership

• Develop the digital product vision for Thrive Online.

• Engage internal and external stakeholders in the vision for Thrive Online: customers, schools and government organisations, Thrive and SEG leaders and specialists, technology suppliers.

• Champion the needs of the customer in terms of the digital product and digital experience, as well as assessing what is commercially saleable and viable.

• Deliver the product development strategy and roadmap in partnership with Operations.

• Work with marketing and sales to continually evolve and communicate the customer value that is being added and future value in upcoming launches.

• Contribute to the annual Budget and the 3-5 year business plan with input on growth, costs, timing, targets and performance. Ensure that the development roadmap is estimated and budgeted for by working with the MD and Finance.

Stakeholder engagement and market testing

• Engage with customers, school groups, government organisations and teaching staff to understand their needs and challenges.

• Understand the landscape, including organisations like Anna Freud Centre, Boxhall Profile, Nurture UK, TIS, Pearson, Place2Be.

• Form effective relationships with internal and external technology suppliers to assess capabilities, seek proposals, select suitable partners for Thrive, manage and ensure delivery of roadmaps/launch plans.

Product leadership & engagement

• Create and deliver a dynamic, engaging and intuitive digital platform for all customer groups from individual teachers using Thrive in the classroom to executive leaders responsible for attainment, attendance and safeguarding across multiple schools.

• Deliver flexible personalised training pathways, a sense of belonging to a vibrant community of likeminded people, fresh insights served up at key moments, the tools to quickly and effectively assess pupils, put strategies in place to enhance their social and emotional skills, and monitor their progress.

• Enable Multi Academy Trusts, Local Authorities and Early Years groups to view data collated from across their settings.

• Lead the collection and analysis of insight from colleagues, customers and other sources to identify new or improved products or product features to meet the needs of the market.

• Create business cases and plans for product development initiatives to add to the product roadmap and get stakeholder approval for them.

• Create, socialise and regularly update the product roadmap.

• Work with internal and external suppliers to deliver that product roadmap. Create statements of work, requests for proposals or development plans, procure suppliers and ensure that product development keeps pace with the needs of the business.

• Work with operations and member services to maximise product usage and minimise churn.

• Work with colleagues in the business to identify and implement any process changes or new capabilities needed to help customers get the most benefit from new or improved products or product features.

• Using the product roadmap, collaborate with sales & marketing to create compelling campaigns to generate sales, pipeline and minimise churn.

• Provide data and insights to the Business Development and Partnerships teams where needed in sales bid submissions and presentations.

• Work with product managers and leaders across other businesses in SEG to identify and deliver opportunities that create value and growth from collaborative product development.

• Contribute to pricing strategy and decisions.

• Report on product performance.

Key areas of knowledge and skills

Essential

• Experience building a new digital product from scratch, or totally transforming an existing digital product

• Experience of working with and leading multifunctional virtual teams.

• Able to enthuse and engage stakeholders about a vision based on robust analysis of data and customer insight.

• Experienced at planning and delivering product development roadmaps, resource allocation, budgeting and launch plans

• Track record of drawing on a blend of IT development expertise (inhouse and/or external) and off the shelf products to create a cost effective solution.

• The ability to develop products that generate sales and deliver ROI.

• Understanding of UK school market and key drivers of decision making in schools, Multi Academy Trusts and Local Authorities.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, able to engage with and influence stakeholders internally and in supplier and client groups.

• Highly motivated and driven to see things through to successful completion and results. Structured approach and mindset.

Desirable

• Leadership of a digital product function, as a product manager or similar.

• Familiarity with the range of software and digital services used by schools, encompassing MIS, enterprise software, learning platforms.

•  University degree or equivalent

• Professional, technical or other post graduate qualifications.

Benefits

You'll benefit from:

• Flexible working

• Performance related bonus

• Free professional development & training

• 28 days holiday + additional 1 day for every year of service up to a maximum of 33 days

• Up to 3 days education based volunteering days (matched by employee holiday)

• Eligibility for a sabbatical up to 12 months long after 5 years service

• Enhanced maternity, adoption and shared parental leave.

• Group life assurance

• Pension

Next steps

To get started, pop your email in the top right of this page.

You’ll answer some questions that are related to your day-to-day job. After the job closes, your answers will go through our sift process: all answers will be anonymised, randomised and then reviewed by a panel of reviewers.

If you are shortlisted, we’ll invite you to interview.

Thrive is an equal opportunities employer

Thrive is committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity and determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, or race, or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable.

We are striving to make our team more representative of the young people we serve, so applications from diverse candidates are warmly welcomed.